Delivery danger: Drivers have one of most dangerous jobs in U.S.

By Danya Hooker

Wednesday

Jul 25, 2007 at 12:01 AMJul 25, 2007 at 9:08 AM

Labor bureau: Food delivery among 8 most dangerous jobs in the nation.

It’s been almost a year since a St. Charles pizza delivery driver was murdered while delivering pizzas near West Chicago. But many in the pizza business still remember the gruesome details of Karen Hassan’s murder.

As fatality rates for delivery drivers rise across the nation, pizza drivers locally and nationally are becoming increasingly aware of the dangers of their late-night, low-pay work.

“I was pretty surprised,” A.J. Sanders, a delivery driver for Giordano’s in St. Charles, said of Hassan’s murder. “I couldn’t imagine anything like that happening around here.”

Sanders said he’s never been robbed or threatened, but the possibility keeps him paying attention.

“I try to be aware of my surroundings,” Sanders said.

Hassan, a mother of four and a delivery driver for Rosati’s Pizza in St. Charles, was murdered Nov. 2, 2006, during a robbery in unincorporated DuPage County.

Bradley Justice, 29, of Sandwich has been charged with first-degree murder and armed robbery in connection with Hassan’s death. Prosecutors allege Justice ordered the pizza from someone else’s cell phone and asked that the pizza be delivered to a lot just across the street from Diamonds Gentlemen’s Club. Once there, prosecutors say Justice beat her with a hammer and hid her body underneath a truck.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists food delivery under the category of drivers/sales workers, which ranked as the eighth most dangerous job in America in 2005, the latest year for which statistics are available.

Between 2003 and 2005, the fatality rate for workers in that category increased, from 26.8 deaths per 100,000 workers to 29.2 per 100,000. The rates were higher than those for construction workers, firefighters and police officers.

Stories like Hassan’s might be rare in West Chicago, but they are all too familiar to the thousands of delivery drivers working in Illinois and across the nation.

In October 2005, several teens used a fake name and phone number to lure pizza delivery driver Frank Sedevic, 60, to an abandoned building in Markham. Sedevic later died of wounds suffered from being beaten with a baseball bat.

A year later, in October 2006, Michael R. Green pistol-whipped and emptied his gun’s magazine into Joseph Munoz, a 21-year-old sandwich delivery driver, during a fatal robbery in Milwaukee.

It’s those stories that has Jim Pohle, president of the American Union for Pizza Delivery Drivers, working for better safety standards. Although all of the restaurants contacted in West Chicago said they listen to their drivers’ concerns and follow safety procedures, Pohle said many of the national chains aren’t so understanding and require drivers to go to areas they know to be dangerous.

“We’re the eighth most deadliest profession in the U.S.,” Pohle said. “We’ve been in that top 10 list for years, and the industry has not changed.”

Giordano’s Pizzeria manager Peter Kates said his drivers aren’t required to go anywhere they don’t want to and won’t deliver to non-addresses, like the parking lot where Hassan was beaten to death.